A Celebration of the Radio Listening Hobby

There have been several recent stories highlighting a new shortwave radio station seeking to cover South Sudan called Eye Radio. Eye Radio already has an FM presence in the area, but has found it inadequate to reach the whole region. I first saw a report about this on the Cumbre-DX mailing list, and then some additional outlets have added more information, including this report from the BBC: A radio station in South Sudan is using older, but tried and tested technology to reach new audiences. Radio is a crucial medium in South Sudan, where illiteracy is high and many areas

Suspected pirates surrender to crew members of the CGC Boutwell. (U.S. Coast Guard photo) Thanks to Mario Filippi (N2HUN) who has graciously allowed me to re-post this excellent piece here. It originally appeared on the SWLing.com Blog (ed. note: make sure to click on the images for a larger view so you can read the captured text - it is fascinating, and I am green with envy! - Robert) Tracking High Seas Pirates on Shortwave Radio by Mario Filippi (N2HUN) (All photos taken by author–click to enlarge) Ahoy! After spinning a radio dial for over a half-century, shortwave listening still

The extreme ultraviolet flash from today's M6.7-class solar flare. Credit: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory There is some new and interesting sunspot activity from a large heart-shaped sunspot which has been drawing some attention recently. Here's the scoop from Spaceweather.com: BIG SUNSPOT ERUPTS: Surprise! Quiet sunspot AR2529 isn't so quiet, after all. The heart-shaped active region erupted on April 18th (00:39 UT), producing a strong M6.7-class solar flare and shortwave radio blackouts around the Pacific. Visit http://spaceweather.com for more information. Might wake up some ionization activity, the bread and butter of our radio hobby! 73, Robert

I find old radio souls now and again who seem, at least to me, to be in touch with the spiritual side of radio. I am not talking about religious programming or some weird cult, but rather they are folks whose souls have been touched by the magic of radio. It is mystical, magical, and at times seems to connect our physical bodies to the very electrons which flow through the air. It is as though our minds are connecting with the radio signals like old friends, able to hear and be heard. Yeah, I know, I am weird.

(The following is part news / part editorial) According to a report going to Parliament for the BBC's broadcast charter proposal, they are preparing for an Internet-only world for broadcasting. This has prompted an investigation of other radio broadcasting services by Radio World magazine. Part of the article Is Broadcast Radio Doomed" follows: Conventional radio and television broadcasting are doomed, eventually. Or so one might reasonably assume from reading “British, Bold, Creative,” the BBC’s broadcast charter proposal for the next decade of its mandate. The BBC’s 10-year broadcast charter is up for renewal in 2016. The proposal is the Beeb’s [British

Frequent readers of this blog will know I am a big aviation monitoring fan. I have an inexpensive SDR dedicated to ADS-B monitoring which in turn sends data to FlightRadar24, which allows sharing of data from live feeds from around the world to be integrated with online data transferred through networks. Another such service is FlightAware which also integrates data from users into a very sophisticared tracking service. For those who receive (and send) flight data from ADS-B capable devices such as the RTL-SDR dongles or have Apps for their tablets and phones, FlightAware announced on Wednesday this change to

A typical radio day for me usually involves several different aspects of the radio hobby. Granted, I may include things others would not strictly call radio, but for me anything associated with the radio hobby is fair game! Sometimes this can be something as mundane as logging contacts, or checking for QSLs (confirmed contacts with other radio operators or stations), or it can be as exciting as putting some test equipment to work checking circuits or measuring frequency response. For me anything connected with radio in almost any form is interesting. A typical day (or portion thereof) might involve listening